Netflix Use Now 15% of Global Downstream Traffic

Netflix use now accounts for 15% of all Internet downstream traffic, as video streaming now dominate Internet traffic globally, according to a new report by Sandvine.

58 percent of all Internet traffic can now be linked to some kind of video streaming application, and Netflix is clearly the most dominant player in the industry. During peak times, Netflix traffic can account for 40% of all traffic across selected network operators in the Americas.

Netflix's closest competitor is now Amazon Prime, but it only ranks 4th in terms of downstream traffic in the Americas, behind generic HTTP media streaming and raw MPEG-TS streaming. Amazon Prime now tops YouTube for download traffic use.

The increasing popularity of 4K video has contributed to the growing use of bandwidth, with an hour of Netflix's 4K streaming using up 7GB of data on average.

And it's not just download traffic that has seen Netflix use up, Netflix now uses considerable upload traffic as well. While Sandvine found that BitTorrent Uploads were still more popular, using up some 9.21% of all upstream traffic in the Americas, Netflix was the next most popular application, accounting for 5.13% of upstream usage. The upstream usage is due to the way the Netflix app keeps track of user actions in order to store playback data, trigger the playback of content previews and other user interface features.

The latest Sandvine report also examined other types of traffic, such as gaming where in found 'Fortnite' to be the biggest bandwidth user in the Americas (33.47%); and in music, where Spotify's dominance continues (now accounting for 33.07% of global traffic).